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In a keynote presentation today at WWDC, Steve Jobs officially unveiled the iPhone 4. It's powered by an A4 chip, has a glass front and back, and has stainless steel around the edges, which turns out to be part of the antenna system. The new iPhone uses what Jobs called a "Retina display," running at 960x640, or 326 ppi. The battery is also bigger, with a corresponding increase in battery life. The iPhone 4 supports 802.11n, has two mics for noise cancellation, and a three-axis gyroscope, which allows rotation and precision that accelerometers can't match. The iPhone 4's camera is using a 5-megapixel backside illuminated sensor, which Jobs said does better at low-light photography. It also records 720p video at 30 frames per second, with tap-to-focus. In addition to this, they've created an iMovie app, which allows users to easily edit videos on their phone. Several live blogsof the event, with pictures, are available. The device ships in the US on June 24. Apple's product page has been updated with specs and a video. Read on for more details.Update: 06/07 18:34 GMT by S: Steve's "One More Thing" this time around: FaceTime, live video chat from one iPhone 4 to another. It is Wi-Fi only at the moment, but they're working with carriers to expand that in the future.

Jobs says the iPhone 4 OS is being renamed "iOS4," since it isn't just focused on phones anymore. The release candidate will be made available to developers today. He demonstrated multitasking, a unified email inbox, and folders for apps. In the App Store, you can expect to see an iPhone version of Netflix soon, as well as Guitar Hero and FarmVille. Jobs also announced that iBooks, the ebook application for the iPad, would be getting a few upgrades. Users will soon be able to make notes, and a bookmark button is on the way. It will put bookmarked pages into the book's table of contents. iBooks is also gaining support for viewing PDF files. On top of that, it won't be just for the iPad anymore; it's coming to the iPhone and iPod Touch as well, and it will sync between devices.

One thing that the past has taught us, is that resolution != quality. Sure, it can shoot 720, but without a decent lens or good sensor, most of those pixels will be just noise anyway. I'm not saying that it's bad, I'm just saying that just because it's 5mp and 720 doesn't mean that it'll give better quality than a 1mp and 320 x 240... It's one of those things that we'll have to wait for the reviews to see...

without a decent lens or good sensor, most of those pixels will be just noise anyway.

Apparently that's pretty close to what Jobs said in the keynote. He said the new camera not only shoots 720 but it does this with a larger sensor so the sensor elements still capture a decent amount of photons and don't lose quality. He also said they use better lenses. We'll see exactly how it pans out but the shots of pictures taken with the 3G model vs the new 4G model show that there's been a huge jump in quality.

It's all smoke & mirrors (and some processing in the background). The primary limitation right now is the lens size, not the sensors or the quality of the lenses. You won't get a significantly better picture without increasing the size of the lens, which it doesn't look like Apple is doing.

Very true. It was hard to convince my mom that her $149 point and shoot digital at 12MP couldn't match my old (ancient, in technology terms) Canon Digital Rebel XT that was "only" 8MP. The reality though is that despite having only 2/3's of the pixel count, my camera takes pictures that look WORLDS better. Side by side shots finally convinced her.

Just like the Mhz myth for processors, cameras also can't simply be measuring in megapixels.

Very true. It was hard to convince my mom that her $149 point and shoot digital at 12MP couldn't match my old (ancient, in technology terms) Canon Digital Rebel XT that was "only" 8MP. The reality though is that despite having only 2/3's of the pixel count, my camera takes pictures that look WORLDS better. Side by side shots finally convinced her.

Just like the Mhz myth for processors, cameras also can't simply be measuring in megapixels.

Another huge factor is the quality of the glass. The lowest-noise, highest-contrast, most-linear, biggest Dmax sensor in the world isn't going to give you good results if it has a cheap-o plastic lens in front of it. (Unless you're looking for that effect, like you get with a Lens Baby.)

My brother purchased an iPhone when they first came out, and put his photos up on the social networking site Multiply. Downsampled, they looked pretty good. Then, I tried screwing around with them a little in Photoshop to understand more. Full resolution, they suck. Sure, they're not bad for a phone, but are worse than the contemporary point-and-shoot I was using, and far, far worse than my DSLR.

Apple would have done this anyway to drive sales. Every time Apple comes out with a new or upgraded product, they sell like hotcakes - people who have the "old" version pony up even more money to buy the new version. I think the folks who jumped from the iPhone to Android are a very small minority and the rest of the Android crowd are folks who wouldn't have bought Apple anyway.

I'm one of those people. I'm an Apple whore and buy pretty much anything Apple puts out (with the exception of the iPad - I don't see the need for one - and Apple TV - no smartcard) but finally gave up my iPhone and switched to the Droid. There were two reasons: One, I hate AT&T service. It's terrible (so far, Verizon has been _much_ better) and two, I can't type worth crud on a touch screen. I find myself increasingly using my phone for email when I travel and the keyboard, even with chiclet keys, makes it much easier (and faster) for me to type. Toward the end, the iPhone pretty much became a portable gaming device and I didn't really need one of those. So while the new iPhone is sexy, it's just not something that would fit my needs.

I don't know if I'd agree with this. If you look at the smartphone market at the time the iPhone launched, things were pretty barren. Similarly, the iPod was entering a market that didn't understand that no matter how much capacity you might have, you still need to fit into people's pockets. The iPhone 3G covered a major weakness in the original iPhone (2g browsing really, really sucks). Jobs brought to the market something that people wanted, and made the interface simple enough that it just works. That's a pretty good accomplishment.

And if you think that every apple product sells like hotcakes, you're missing quite a few. As a short list.

Anyone who'd used Palm's devices before the iPhone would say that the iPhone was an evolutionary improvement that imitated most of the Palm features. An awful lot of Apple fans use the word "revolutionary" when they mean "I never owned a PDA/phone".

Wow, that was a troll, but somehow you've been modded insightful, so I guesss I'll bite:
Only the most naive users and apple fanboi's would believe that apples smart-phone deign was truly innovative and first of it's kind. HTC had them beat for years: the MDA II, MDAII, MDA vairo, MDA Amino, vairo II, wing, kiaser, magician, touch diamond; and Palm pretty much defined the screen size for smart devices.

Don't. You know that euphoria you have when you're watching porn and then after you're done jacking off you feel guilty about it. This is the same thing only instead of a woman's skin, you're jacking off to steel, glass an silica. If you go over the top and buy it, you'll wont' just feel guilty, you'll feel like an idiot.

Just get an Android phone. From a hardware perspective, the newest Android phones like the Droid Incredible are pretty close to this (or even exceed it in a few areas still), and they don't have the draconian policies. My bet is that HTC will soon leapfrog Apple once again (afterall, this thing just barely bests the Incredible, which has been out for a month or two) pretty soon. My next upgrade isn't due until this December and I'm guessing there will be some REALLY nice stuff out by then (I know HTC will have jumped one iteration by then, but I'm crossing my fingers on them being two iterations forward by then).

From a hardware perspective, the newest Android phones like the Droid Incredible are pretty close to this (or even exceed it in a few areas still)

I just got an htc EVO 4G on Friday, and I'm actually not feeling any buyer's remorse, even post-iPhone 4, which is nice. I DO like the iPhone 4's pixel density, but it's much smaller than the EVO 4G's 4.3" display, which is one of the main reasons I got the phone I did. I don't know what the pixel density is, but the quality of the text is flat-out amazing, so I've got no complaints there. The EVO 4G has a higher resolution main camera, and the front-facing one doesn't require WiFi to do video chat. I've not messed much with the camera on my phone yet, so I don't know the quality of it, as megapixels aren't everything. The EVO has dual LED flash; not sure about the new iPhone. You'd think with Apple basing their business around iPhones and iPads, that they would've announced some kind of tethering or hotspot capability for them to work in concert, but I didn't see anything like that announced (might've missed it). I guess if you have an iPad w/o 3G, you can just get an EVO and turn on its hotspot and not have to deal with AT&T.:)

To me, the deal-breakers with the iPhone 4 are _still_ being restricted to AT&T (insane), and of course, the draconian developer policies (which DO affect users, even though most users never know it).

Android phones evolve MUCH quicker than Apple's, especially htc (and to a lesser extent, Motorola). We'll see 1.5gHz Android phones this year, and quite possibly the dual-core phones will start trickling out in Q4, as well. Hopefully by this time next year, we'll have 720p displays on LTE-enabled phones, as well. The new chipmaking process shrink coming to the industry at the end of the year will enable processor to sip much less juice than they do now, so battery life should get better as well, though that will be dependent on the eternal struggle with faster chips, too, so we'll see. Fun times! Computers are much less interesting right now, tech-wise, than cellphones.

You, as a regular schmuck (I'm presuming) are not really affected by the so-called "draconian policies"... and furthermore, it's a bit of stretch to call a curated app store a draconian experience. I've not once felt excessively, harshly, nor severely treated while using my iPhone.

How are we not affected by the dictatorship of Steve Jobs? We're not allowed to use GPL'd software; we're not allowed to use applications that replicate included functionality; we're not allowed to modify the UI to our liking; we're not allowed to watch porn; we're not allowed to use the unlimited data connection we have to pay for all of our legitimate purposes; we're not allowed to develop software using tools that Steve Jobs does not approve of; we're not allowed to use some of the most popular technology on the internet because of the "benevolent" dictator's insecurities. Shall I continue?

This is different from shopping at Wal-Mart, Target, etc. because those companies might not sell what you're interested in, but they aren't going to stop you from buying the products you want from another source. Please, stop glossing over the fact that this "walled garden" blows; it's insulting to my intelligence. I suppose if I embraced the lack of freedom, I'd be happy. Not unlike the Patriot Act, I might add.

"Steve's clutches"? What is he some cartoon villain now? I'm sure he's cackling in his lair right now plotting the next way he can make your life worse by forcing yet another industry to make better and more useful products.

...are affected by the iPhone, as evidenced by the fact that nearly every mobile platform is copying the App Store model, some of them with exactly the same kind of draconian lock-in policies.

Draconian? Let's take the WABAC machine [wikipedia.org] back to the 1960s when AT&T was the only telecom company in town - LITERALLY. Back then you didn't even own the large and primitive phone in your house. It was leased to you by the phone company which was a government sanctioned monopoly and wired directly into the wall. If you didn't pay they came and took the phone from your house. Oh and you paid handsomely for the privilege of having this level of "service". The phone was robust but not remotely innovative and if you think Apple is being "draconian" you really have no idea what draconian is. You have more options now than you ever have had.

Really the enemy here isn't the phone manufacturers. The enemy is the telecom companies. The handset manufacturers main customers aren't you and me. Their customers are the telecom companies (AT&T etc) and the interests of the telecoms differ significantly from yours and mine. That's why most of them historically have paid little attention to the user experience. They didn't have to to sell products to their customers. Apple, despite their flaws, has forced the telecoms and handset manufacturers to pay more attention to the end users. Yes they are being restrictive but most of the worst restrictions come from the telecoms, not the handset makers.

I've met and spoken with Ed Whitacre when he was CEO of AT&T. I've never met a CEO who so bluntly held his customers in lower regard than he did and I've met quite a few Fortune 500 CEOs. My father and grandfather worked for AT&T and its successor companies for a combined 50 years between them. I know these companies well and they are not your friend.

So this is not something we can just sit by and watch, it is an industry wide phenomenon that we must fight on every front that opens up, or one day we will get out of bed and there will be no platforms left where we have the legal right to run our own software any more.

Excellent. Fight the good fight. I support you fighting for open platforms completely. But let's keep the hyperbole out of it shall we? Steve Jobs by all accounts can be a real ass but the phones we have today are better products because of his efforts. There are at least 3 other major phone platforms (Blackberry, Android and Nokia/Symbian) competing with Apple and the more they compete the better off you and I will be.

Rootkits in CDs, built to spec DVD players that force me to watch 5 previews and 2 copyright warnings and disable just skipping to the damned DVD menu (Or perish the thought, just playing the damned movie), Removing other OS from the PS3 and since the upgrades are required for new games, effectively banning me from new games if I want to keep linux on my PS3.

Their products are generally sound, and their eReaders are very nice, but the company is not one I care to send my money to based on their anti-consumer practices. (That ignores their whole music-branch which for their participation in the absurd copyright infringement lawsuits means I will not even go to the concert of a band that is signed with them)

I'm curious, specifically which draconian policy would impair your use and enjoyment of the phone?

1) Standards & Development:My Nexus One acts as a hard drive with my computer. It uses standard USB cables to connect to it. Tethering with the nexus one had no hassles whatsoever. The Nexus One worked flawlessly with Linux and Windows without the need for drivers, and I did not have to pay for a developers license to start playing with it.

2) Usability:The Android supports multitasking and as such, has a much more useful "homescreen", which is actually several screens that can contain widgets with uptodate information. The home screen is just an app, I can replace it. The keyboard is just an app, I can replace it. Email is just an app, I can replace it. I can run services in the background with a proper notification system so that I can be properly notified should I choose it from whatever app I install. If I don't like Google's idea of Android, I'm free to install any version of Android I want. I'm free to install any OS that can work with my Nexus One I want.

3) Upgradability:I can swap the 4gb MicroSD card for a 32gb MicroSD card should I chose to do so, and only pay the costs of the microsd card.

4) Flexibility:There are no or very little limitations to the kinds of apps available on the market, and nothing stops me from installing apps outside of the market as well. As a developer, I am not limited to what I can make my app do. I am not limited to one programming language to make my app.

iPhone has the exact opposite of all four of these points, and I find that to be horribly draconian.

If I am going to shell out $600 for a device, I intend to use it as I see fit and not be dictated by anyone on how I should use my shiny new toy.

Actually, people should be in awe - and if you're Amazon you should be shitting your pants. One of the big debates lately in the publishing industry has been in regards to a unified format. Allowing PDF's in the iBooks part of iTunes basically makes that a moot point. Brilliant on Apple's part, and a death knell for traditional publishing.

Have you ever tried to read an ebook in PDF format? I have and quite frankly it sucks. It kind of works on my eee PC, but anything smaller than that and it's not going to work. There's a lot of features you don't get with a PDF which even a basic reader app can do. Such as inverting the colors so that the background is dark and the text is light. Causing the text to reflow based upon the size of the screen. And not contain executable code which documents should never have included.

The maximum storage capacity of the iphone maxes out at 32G, while the ipod touch goes up to 64G. I suppose that's comparable to the HTC's incredible maximum capacity of 40G (via 8 GB internal and 32 GB microsd card), but it's unfortunate that there isn't a larger option. The iphone really seems capable of replacing many mp3 players for reasonably sized collections, but with apps and music it's not hard to hit 32G.

I've been a proponent for 300+ DPI screens for quite a while. I never got to see the Neo Freerunner (282 DPI), but the Droid (265 DPI) looks good. Jobs is correct, from about about 10-12 inches viewing, this is what is needed to have the device seem like paper. My preference though is to take that high DPI to a bigger screen - say something like 1280x720 with 4.8" diagonal (308 DPI). New Snapdragons are supporting 1280x800 (not sure I like 16/10 better than 16/9 for phones - it is the standard for laptops these days), so hopefully we'll see some Android phones with these high DPI numbers soon.

A more accurate name would be "back-wired sensor". Like the human eye, older cameras had the wiring in front of the sensor elements. Back-illuminated ones have the wiring in the back. That gets you about 45% more light, because it doesn't have to make it past the wiring and transistors.

Been around for a while, but only making its way into the consumer space recently. Basically boosts your low-light performance by roughly half. That means you can either double the number of pixels per space and still get the same performance (which is what apple did), or leave the spacing alone and make killer security cameras and astronomy sensors.

In either event, this really is a major jump in camera tech. I'll be interested to know if they also used Sony's CMOS process for it.

10:39 am Doing a live demo now.10:39 am Firing up both phones.10:40 am Zoomed in difference looking at home screen is remarkable. Apple had to get special projectors to show just how good this screen is.10:40 am Loading up NY Times next.10:41 am Loading slowly, "networks in here always unpredictable."10:41 am Steve asks everyone to get off WiFi to help him out, audience laughs.10:41 am NY Times still not loading on iPhone 4.10:41 am Switching to backups.10:42 am iPhone 4 now on AT&T, all kinds of error messages about not being connected to the internet popping up on iPhone 4.10:42 am Steve goes back to showing photos.10:43 am Difference is fairly amazing.10:43 am iPhone 4 slowly barely loads NY Times.10:43 am Steve apologizing again.10:43 am Asks Scott for any suggestions.10:44 am Someone shouts, "Try Verizon."10:44 am Steve concludes demo.

Of course it turned out that there were something like 570 wifi base stations operating in the audience and it totally hosed the whole wifi network for the event. Since the iPhones were set to load their data over wifi rather than over the cell network it killed the demos. Once the organizers made people turn off their devices the demos went very smoothly. Funny how that works!

I don't know a whole lot about wireless bandwidth, but one thing I did notice about this display is that the 3GS apparently had no problem loading the NYT website, while the iPhone 4 wouldn't load it. In my eyes it appeared to be more of a glitch with the hardware, rather than a problem with the network. Also, how else could the people in the audience use that same network (probably pretty slowly I'd guess) if the network were that saturated. At the very least even if it were a dead connection, why would you just keep your laptop open and connected while watching the presentation.

For the price that people pay to go to the conference ('ve been to one) It's interesting that that many people would be on their computers during something that one would assume is fairly important. Were there really ~570 reporters liveblogging the event?

I'm not Apple bashing, just pointing out what I noticed. Please don't mod me to hell.

I don't know a whole lot about wireless bandwidth, but one thing I did notice about this display is that the 3GS apparently had no problem loading the NYT website, while the iPhone 4 wouldn't load it. In my eyes it appeared to be more of a glitch with the hardware, rather than a problem with the network. Also, how else could the people in the audience use that same network (probably pretty slowly I'd guess) if the network were that saturated.

When you have an overloaded wifi spectrum like that usually what happens is that some devices manage to get a clean connection and some don't. It's very sporadic and unpredictable. It's not like every device's connection will fail. You might even have what looks like a good connection and then it will stall for no apparent reason.

There are also several bands on which they could possibly be communicating and it could just be that the 4G and the 3GS happened to be on different bands at that point. The 4G's band might have gotten over-congested and there was still some room on the band that the 3GS was on.

And, yes, there were a ton of reporters and people using devices in that audience. Wireless is great but it relies on the assumption that there will only be a certain amount of connections communicating at one time. Once you surpass that limit you get into the "odd things happen" zone.

Consider an n-dimensional hypercube, and connect each pair of vertices to obtain a complete graph on 2n vertices. Then colour each of the edges of this graph using only the colours red and black. What is the smallest value of n for which every possible such colouring must necessarily contain a single-coloured complete sub-graph with 4 vertices which lie in a plane?

is not geeky, but awareness of a mainstream hollywood kids action movie is?

Someone must have changed the definition of geekiness while I wasn't looking.

The reason to choose 960x640 resolution is purely technical: to overcome their bad 3-year old decision to stick to a single resolution for application development. Quadrupling pixels is the only working solution for all the legacy apps out there.

It wasn't a bad decision. Having a fixed resolution means that apps can be designed to a pixel perfect degree. And given that 3 years later, they have been able to up the resolution in a way that means all those apps remain pixel perfect means that fixing the resolution in the first place wasn't a technological dead end.

For a desktop windowing OS, variable resolution combined with resolution independence is a good thing. Apps run in windows that can be of any size, and the generous screen space allows plenty of flexibility for apps to rearrange themselves to suit. For a screen as small as a smartphone that just doesn't work. Designers have to design very carefully to fit the app UI on the screen in a good way.

Yeah, I mean, who wants the world's largest selection of quality apps, all vetted to be reasonably sure of being malware-free and of at least a minimum level of quality and stability!

Yeah, because fart apps are considered quality. Quantity != quality. Plenty of quality apps have been denied, while plenty of crap is available in the app store.

Even though, at present, the "walled garden" provides a superior all-around app experience for most people

New Kids on the Block had a number 1 hit. "Superior" is very subjective.

there are some for whom ideology trumps reality. And I'm the one that gets called "fanboy"?

You are defending the fact that your device is artificially limited. That, to me, is the very definition of a fanboy.

Nothing I can do or say will change the fact that Apple retains control over what you can and can't do with your device. The only thing I can do is vote with my wallet, so that's what I do. Forgive me for being a consumer who pays attention.

You are limited to the app store....Again, you are still limited to the store....It does, but once again, Android users aren't limited to the Marketplace....However, I don't like being restricted to a single location as a means for finding applications for my phone, regardless of what that single location offers.

Exactly. You don't care about the reality of what's offered, but instead by your ideological aversion to having only one app store.

Bullshit. Apple doesn't control what I can do, they merely control what apps I can get from the App Store, nothing more. I can buy a key and compile and run any app I want. I don't even have to buy a key, someone else can and distribute an app to hundreds of people for free. I can jailbreak. I can use HTML5 apps, which are extremely capable (Google's Voice webapp is fantastic).

See bold section. Having to hack your phone to leap over the walled garden isn't necessarily something to use in an attempt to sway my opinion, when I can already download anything I want from wherever I want for my unmodified device.

No, you read the bold section. You don't have to hack the iPhone to run apps from outside the app store. You don't even have to pay to do so.

Once again, Android devices aren't limited to the Appstore....I don't have an iPhone primarily because I don't want to be stuck with a single location for applications. I'm sorry that seems stupid to you

Not wanting to be stuck with a single app store is not stupid, but choosing an inferior product for the primary reason that it has the option for additional sources of apps tends towards the irrational. I.e., fanboyism.

Now, if you truly think that Android will end up with more apps because of this, or at the very least, more high quality apps, then your decision to avoid the iPhone is rational, but the basis behind it is still based on ideology. There's no reason whatsoever to believe that third party Android app stores is going to result in more apps than the iPhone. What will result in more apps is more users and a higher-quality user experience. Android lags significantly behind iPhone in both categories.

Or put differently, if there was a third-party app store for iOS, how many more quality apps would there be? There'd be a native Google Voice (like I already said, though, the existing web app is excellent), there'd be that Squeak interpreter app. There'd be a bunch of porn apps. And...? Flash?

Oh, what a long list of things I can't have!

You repeat the "there's only one app store" thing over and over, but you completely fail to demonstrate how that's a problem. It's just ideology. It's fanboyism.

What's sad is, the most open OS on a smartphone you can buy from a carrier today (nobody buys unlocked GSM phones in the US, so the N900 is out,) from the user perspective, anyway, is WINDOWS FREAKING MOBILE 6.5.3.

It's an optional thing for a developer to include in his app. I can imagine that there will be free apps that use iAdd and pay versions that don't have ads. Just use the version without ads and you are good. If there's no version without ads then don't use the app!

That's basically how it works now except Apple is providing developers with an easy and good-looking way to include ads in their app without having to cut deals on the side. Pretty much win-win for Apple, app developers and iOS users.

Indeed adverts are. Adblock Plus is a browser plugin so that adds are an optional thing a user can choose to accept. I'm unclear as to what way graphics heavy adverts will be 'win-win for... iOS users' given that as of today it is no longer possible to start an unlimited data contract.

Will a user be winning when an ad for an ap that would have cost $1.99 for the ad-free version sends them over their monthly cap and results in a $10 bill from AT&T?

All ads have done is resulted in a proliferation of free apps with limited functionality and lots of adverts. It's cluttered the marketplace and made it difficult to distinguish between applications and value. It's not immediately obvious how much paid or versions of similar apps cost, making price comparisons more difficult for the user. Where's the 'win' in that?

Apple have distinct carrier contracts. What would have been innovative would have been to negotiate with carriers, make bandwidth to Apple's Ad servers not count as part of a user's allowance and have the advertiser pick up the cost of serving their Ad.

Would you watch network television if you were billed for each ad you see?

Speaking for myself as an iPhone developer, I will not be adding this to any of my apps. Since I freaking hate them as a consumer I'm not going to then turn right back around and add them when I'm trying to make money.

I think Bill Hicks summed advertising up quite accurately:"There's no rationalisation for what you do and you are Satan's little helpers. Okay - kill yourself - seriously. You are the ruiner of all things good, seriously. No this is not a joke, you're going, "there's going to be a joke coming," there's no fucking joke coming. You are Satan's spawn filling the world with bile and garbage. You are fucked and you are fucking us. Kill yourself. It's the only way to save your fucking soul, kill yourself."

There are a whole bunch of websites that I've been browsing almost every single day for years, and have never personally given them even a dime of my money. If it wasn't for advertisers paying some bills, then I wouldn't get to do that.

Accept the reality. Content isn't free to produce. Someone has to pay for it. You can mumble whatever you want about subscriptions or micropayments or whatever, but the reality is that all of that stuff implemented on a large scale would be just annoying as your average web ad, and you'd rather not pay anyways.

That's not to say that some ads are more tasteful while others are purposefully aggravating and quite annoying. But to pretend that everything would be puppies and roses if web ads went away is to ignore how the world works.

It's not necessarily that Apple truly innovates, or even that it simply does things better (i.e. the iPhone).

It's the fact that Apple is one of those brands that a lot of industries follow.

So once -Apple- starts doing videoconferencing, even just the two-way that's been shown in TV commercials since the day phones with two cameras (or just the 'front' camera) were launched, you'll suddenly see a lot of (renewed) interest in supporting it; including carriers.

Personally, I yawn at these announcements in terms of what they announce. But I applaud the announcements themselves, as it'll light some fire under companies' behinds to kick back into gear.

The one announcement bit that has the opposite effect, is the FarmVille-as-an-app. Not that I care for FarmVille, but one major problem FarmVille players supposedly had was the lack of Flash support on the iPhone (and iPod touch, and iPad) - Flash being what FarmVille needed to run. But Apple made it clear that they would definitely not be supporting Flash, and instead were 'promoting' HTML5.So will there be an HTML5 FarmVille? Perhaps - but it's clear that at least as far as the announcement goes, it will be an iPhone/Pod Touch/Pad-only app instead.I believe this is far more the future that Apple envisions, than that developers use HTML5.

But their platform, their store, their firstborns and FarmVille folks' freedom to decide to make it a native app and all that; such are things:)

The reality is,(with a few exceptions I'm sure)that for any reasonably complex application, a native app can almost certainly be superior than a web app. If the SDK and API's are even halfway decent, you're going to have way more options programming directly to the OS than you will going through a web browser. Not to mention that native apps can gain easy access to UI elements that are consistent within that OS. These benefits hold true on a desktop computer as well as a phone/tablet/whatever.

Now that doesn't mean that farmville is going to take full advantage of all of that, but at least they have that opportunity. Honestly, if I was in Farmville's position, I'd have released a native iPhone App and also would be working on an HTML5 version. If you've got the resources, you should put your best foot forward on any platform that you think will make you money.

This is exactly what Apple wants to have happen: every developer now publishes a native iOS version of their app. The lack of Flash support on iOS is merely the tip of the iceberg. If Apple's strategy comes to fruition, iOS becomes the dominant app platform so developers are basically forced to support it - just as Windows was for the past 20 years. And Apple both gets to control what is available for iOS (read: keep out competition), and gets a cut of everything that sells. Read this (this is not my blog, it's mostly about finance and banking and that whole mess, but there are a handful of posts on other topics):

It's a pretty scary future indeed, but sadly with iOS's dominance I can't see how to stop the freight train. With PCs, maybe there was enough market pressure for an "open" system where we can run whatever we want. But with smartphones, it's enough of an "appliance" that I don't think anyone will care. And we'll be stuck with Apple's draconian policies for the next 20 years.

Yeah, I'm not so sure about this whole mobile video conferencing. Now instead of the assholes with the earpieces, we're going to see people holding out their arms not paying attention to where they are walking and being even bigger douches. And this goes for Driod users with this features too.

You do realize that there's a difference between having a webcam sitting on top of your monitor and sending live video from your phone, right? Not to mention that Apple's version of it will probably be about as simple as making a phone call.

Like they said in the keynote, this isn't some new idea, this is a "vision of the future" that predates Apple, but finally starting to become a reality. It's about damn time, too.

Not to mention that Apple's version of it will probably be about as simple as making a phone call.

Yeah, and it will probably only let you talk to other iPhone users. But, hey, that way you can maintain your illusion that this is something new or unique to Apple. Wouldn't want to have your preconceptions challenged, would you now.

Here in Japan the majority of phones on sale have had the ability to 'video call' over 3G using a front camera for several years. My wife's crappy old sharp which is ready to be thrown in the bin included.

My current iPhone was a step back in that regard, and it'll be pretty amusing once Softbank starts selling the iPhone alongside phones which can video-call over 3G and has to tell customers that the iPhone is 'wifi only' for some goddamned reason.

Wifi only because AT&T will never allow it. They say they are working with carriers which means outside the US it should be available in no time but inside, you can forget about it.

It is iPhone only, but it sounds like Apple is opening up the protocol for others to use. It would be nice if there was a standard for video calls on phones.

I've got over 14,000 Wi-Fi hotspots to choose from to chat and discuss in video conferencing. The last thing I need is a bunch of morons driving on I-5 trying to chat and look at who they are chatting with, simultaneously. It's bad enough already with just voice.

Uh... So the thing obviously doesn't have an actual gyroscope, so I'm assuming he means rotational accelerometers... which is better then regular accelerometers how? They measure different things. Am I or the summary getting some lingo wrong?

The Wii "wiimote" Controller has three MEMS linear accelerometers. The Wii "Motion Plus" adapters plug into the wiimote, and add three MEMS angular accelerometers, which are also very commonly referred as gyroscopic sensors. If the phone has the gyro sensors, it can sense relative tilt motions, but can't sense its own position relative to gravity when held still or sitting on a dock. The linear accelerometers work best at slow gestures, like those found in marble games or augmented reality windows. If it has all six sensors, which I expect it does, then there are a lot of quick and slow motion gestures you can do very accurately.

I'm surprised that more cell phones haven't implemented it. Maybe they have. Does anyone know if others are experimenting with it too?

Noise cancellation with dual microphones is about 60 years old, as a technology. My 18 month old HTC Touch Pro 2 has dual mics (for noise canceling), and my 3 year old Plantronics Bluetooth earpiece has dual mics for noise canceling. The difference is that the iPhone is finally catching up to what most other phones and communication devices have offered for the last few years, so rather than admit they were way behind the times they hype the crap out of it to make it seem like its iRevolutionary and thus Apple is seen as an innovator.

Reality is, Apple with dual mics is where Samsung, Motorola, Nokia, HTC, and most others were back in 2006. Apple's just really good at getting people to accept whatever they say at face value, even if it's just fluff and marketing glitz.

Given that they've paid out one BILLION dollars to developers thus far (and, no, that isn't a Mike Myers comedy sketch), I'd say that deciding to not develop for the iPhone is a decidedly stupid decision. Say whatever you want but thousands and thousands and thousands of apps have been developed for the platform, without issue, and developers have been paid a rather sizable amount of money for their work. But, hey, feel free to avoid the platform because there's a slim chance that you might do something you're not supposed to and thus have your app be rejected. There are 100 developers behind you in line, so to speak, that are more than willing to fill the void your absence will create.

I'd love to write a best-selling novel, but until Bedford St. Martin's gives me 100% assurance that they will publish and advertise my novel before I start writing it, I'm not going to write a word of it.

There is a fundamental risk in writing new books: "Will customers read this?" This risk can be calculated to a certain extent. My concern with writing a novel for Bedford St. Martin's is that an additional incalculable risk exists, and it is simply too much to bear.

You'd better stop buying almost every single product in every single store then since nearly all of it is made in China or some other country with similarly low wages. I don't know how anyone can be shocked about Chinese workers getting paid a low wage, it's very common knowledge & the reason everything is made there in the first place.

Are you swearing off all Chinese made products? If not you are a hypocrite. Foxconn also makes non-Apple devices & products. Are you going to swear off buying these too?

"Foxconn produces the Mac mini, the iPod, the iPad, and the iPhone for Apple Inc.; Intel-branded motherboards for Intel Corp.; various orders for American computer manufacturers Dell and Hewlett-Packard; motherboards for UK computer manufacturer Zoostorm; the PlayStation 2 and PlayStation 3 for Sony; the Wii for Nintendo; the Xbox 360 for Microsoft, cell phones for Motorola, the Amazon Kindle, and Cisco equipment."http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foxconn [wikipedia.org]